Renee Parsons
It is as if a strange toxic ailment has taken over European leaders today with regard to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, It is as if the EU has succumbed to an inexplicable anti Russian fever driving its leadership to accept an irrationality, a total illogic of reason in joining the Ukraine government in its death-defying spiral of succeeding in its futile quest of defeating Russia.
The Ukraine – Russia conflict is in its fifth year and promises to expand as the Europeans are threatening to increase their support on behalf of Ukraine – except the truth is that the Europeans have little to offer Ukraine.
The origins of the conflict date back to 1960 meeting at reunification of Germany when the US promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move ‘one inch eastward’ toward the border of Russia.
In the ensuing decades since that promise lost its meaning as Ukraine, encouraged by the US, was planning to join the EU and allow NATO on its border with Russia.
In response, the Russians were adamant and began a Special Military Operation in 2022 to protect the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk which were under direct, military attack by the Kyiv government.
The peace meeting scheduled in Istanbul attracted former Uk Prime Minster Boris Johnson to convince President Zelensky to not sign the agreement; that Europe and US would have their back.
Zelensky, who had been elected President on a peace platform, was aware of the 1990s agreement and left Istanbul with no agreement.
Fast forward to 2024 with the election of US President Donald Trump who had campaigned and been elected as a self proclaimed ‘Peace President’ and with a promise to end the Ukraine conflict on ‘day one’. Trump later met in an Anchorage summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a settlement.
Trump lived up to neither promise as the US continued to provide behind-the-scenes support for Ukraine with weapons, intelligence, targeting and funding to maintain support for the conflict. If Trump had fulfilled that promise, this war would have been over years ago, saving thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives.
But, because Trump himself did not make a move to end of the conflict has allowed members of the EU to voice support for war with Russia, they have taken a more active posture.
Fast forward to 2026, now Trump, under mid term election pressure from a mess he has created in Iran, has offered a diesel fuel deal with Putin, to sell diesel to the US in exchange for sanctions relief. Just weeks earlier, the US approved a new sanctions bill that was said to further pressure Russia capitulation.
It is fair to say that Trump’s motivation has been less than a desire for peace and more from a self centered interest in protecting his own electoral position as the American public is overwhelmingly against the Iran war and the economic inflation that the Trump administration has created.
Enter the EU leadership who have supported Zelensky with weapons sold to European countries that incidentally found their way into Ukraine as well as home-grown drones that provided Ukraine with the means to initiate attack on Russian energy facilities and civilian targets.
With an early winter expected and combat intensified, thousands and thousands of Ukraine citizens are forming a 40 hour wait clogging the highway into Poland. Zelensky takes frequent trips to visit with his European allies in Brussels or London where Europeans don’t care what the battlefield conditions are and that he has not been a legal president since 2024 when he banned elections.
His administration is still ‘kidnapping’ Ukraine men off city streets to enforce conscription into the military while on the battlefield, Ukraine surrenders to Russia are commonplace.
Both former CIA agent Larry Johnson and Michael von der Schulenberg, 35 year career diplomat and member of English Parliament have found the EU level of intense hatred of Russia unconscionable and unacceptable.
Schulenberg says of the EU “they just don’t have it, they don’t have the bombs, they don’t have the public will. They should be first to oppose war on the European continent. He says that listening to European parliament sessions and as EU members beat the drums of war – there is no discussion about diplomacy.
“Of course the US are our allies; but if we want to end the war, the only way we can do this is putting more pressure on Russia. and we would call on US to put the sanctions in place we so that we would finish this war and these attacks on refineries would not be necessary to make war is over” said Kaja Kallas, EUs foreign policy chief.
Kallas makes no mention that sanctions have not worked for last five year. There is no mention of diplomacy and no admission that the war is lost.
The Europeans have invented the fabrication that Russia is losing the war and that the Ukrainians are dominating the battlefield.
There is no understanding in Europe or among some of the US Senate that Zelensky is losing the war as he meets regularly with a delegation from the US Senate. Frequently led by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.) who encourage Zelensky to continue the conflict.
Schulenberg says Zelensky has to understand he is losing the war and that he has to talk to the Russians. The Europeans no have realization of the situation with NATO on the Russian border; it is the Europeans who are blocking peace as they continue their war agenda.
The only option for the Europeans is to talk to the Russians and they still talk about winning the war.
Former CIA Larry Johnson reported that several European countries displayed an intensity to their anti Russian condemnation that he believes will lead Europe to start a war with Russia.
Their irrationality is ‘off the charts’ and that ‘at elite level they don’t want to talk about diplomacy’. There is no European recognition, that they ignore NATO was pushing counties right up to Russia’s border.’
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Trump said Zelensky has not done enough to achieve peace in the more than four years since Russia invaded its territory.
“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.
Renee Parsons has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and a staff member in the US House of Representative in Washington, DC. Before its demise, she was also a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter.